Hotel Zachary

Hotel Zachary opened in March 2018 at 3630 North Clark Street, directly outside Wrigley Field in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. It has 173 rooms, flies the Tribute Portfolio flag, and was built as part of Gallagher Way, the mixed-use development the Ricketts family put up around the ballpark. The name comes from Zachary Taylor Davis, the Chicago-born architect who designed the ballpark that opened in 1914.

The place

The address is 3630 North Clark Street, on the corner of the ballpark block in Wrigleyville, the part of Lakeview that fills with crowds on home game days.

Gallagher Way, the plaza and retail strip built around the hotel, sits on the former surface lots beside the stadium. For a visitor who is not in town for baseball, the neighborhood works differently: bars, small music venues and the Music Box Theatre, a long-running cinema that screens independent and foreign films, are within a short walk of the entrance.

The hotel's position is the main reason to choose it. Match days change the picture, with street closures and crowds around the building.

The concept

Nothing here is a conversion: the hotel is a ground-up building of seven storeys. Stantec Architecture designed the exterior in a manner that echoes early-20th-century Chicago buildings, a deliberate match for the 1914 ballpark next door, and Walsh Construction built it. Studio K Creative handled the interiors.

The hotel belongs to Marriott's Tribute Portfolio, a collection of independently styled hotels that keep their own names and local identity. It was developed by Hickory Street Capital, the real-estate arm of the Ricketts family, which also owns the Chicago Cubs.

Inside, the 173 rooms use hardwood floors and large windows, with oversized rain showers and apothecary-inspired bath products. Some rooms and suites look out over Wrigley Field, a feature the property markets as a selling point on game days.

Dining & wellness

The hotel's public spaces are organised around a lounge on the second floor and a lobby bar serving cocktails and American dishes at lunch and dinner. A hot breakfast is served in the morning.

The ground floor of the building is let to Chicago-based retail and restaurant tenants, part of the wider Gallagher Way programme, so the immediate street offers more choices than the hotel itself.